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Styler1 Posted 17 years ago
Speech & Pronunciation

Pronunciation...ugh

I immirated to the U.S. when I was 16. I've heard from my parents and teachers that it's very hard to pronounce like an American native if you move to the U.S. in late adolescence or later. I guess they were right. People very often don't understand what I said and ask me to repeat it. It's so GD embarrassing. On the other hand my little sister's pronunciation and accent are nearly perfect. I feel so inferior to her....

So uh, any suggestions?
  

Top answer

You need to learn to speak from scratch, as if you were a child. That means you should start to learn the vowels and the consonants, then put them together to create phonemes, then connect them to form words, then learn to join words and say short sentences with the right intonation. If you have a strong foreign accent, you probably aren't even pronouncing syllables "decently"...

— Kooyeen

  • You need to learn to speak from scratch, as if you were a child.
  • That means you should start to learn the vowels and the consonants, then put them together to create phonemes, then connect them to form words, then learn to join words and say short sentences with the right intonation.
  • If you have a strong foreign accent, you probably aren't even pronouncing syllables "decently"...
  • dee sunt lee.
  • You need to start from the basics...
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2 Answers
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You need to learn to speak from scratch, as if you were a child. That means you should start to learn the vowels and the consonants, then put them together to create phonemes, then connect them to form words, then learn to join words and say short sentences with the right intonation.

If you have a strong foreign accent, you probably aren't even pronouncing syllables "decently"... dee s
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In the meantime, the #1 reason it's difficult to understand people with an accent (and I'm sure it's the same in your native language when spoken by people who have learned it later in life) is that they speak too quickly. So SLOW DOWN to start with. That will help people understand you more than anythign else.

Speak into a tape recorder and play it back. Can you hear any of the things th
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